


The Full Concentrated Power of Presentation

by Prinzenhasserin



Category: Original Work
Genre: Crack, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-19
Updated: 2018-08-19
Packaged: 2019-06-29 08:05:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15725340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prinzenhasserin/pseuds/Prinzenhasserin
Summary: R'onn and Mindflayer have been locked in their epic dance of villain-hero for over a decade, but the sudden telepathic bond disrupts things. Well, and there's that other thing.





	The Full Concentrated Power of Presentation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rosencrantz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rosencrantz/gifts).



> This is a bit silly— okay, a lot silly— but I hope you enjoy it anyway!

“It’s not my fault,” Mindflayer said out loud. They were lying on ground zero of the explosion of his lab—both of them had reacted to the sudden influx of loud thoughts to their minds by fainting, which wasn't the most dignified reaction they could have had. R'onn had just managed to shove them out of the immediate blast radius—the new telepathic mind control device had malfunctioned.

That was readily apparent since this scheme had actually worked— "I can hear you," the Mindflayer said, and started thinking about the stupidity of metahumans, and one metahuman in particular. It was distracting, and didn't help R'onn R'onn get over the fact that his nemesis and he were using the same telepathic brainspace, and how was this supposed to work in any way?

The sudden explosion, combined with the telepathic assault, had rendered their fight useless. And rendered the entirety of Mindflayer's secret laboratory useless, looking at the state of it. All the laser beams were on the ground, and the cupboards full of terrifying liquids laid in a pool of glass shards and goo on the floor.

"Still not my fault, and you gotta stop thinking about the codes to the president's security. You know there's nothing I want more than to manipulate her into doing what I want."

"I'm not thinking about that!" R'onn said, furiously, and then, "I don't even know them, you wouldn't be able to get at them this way, fiend!"

 _Fiend_ , Mindflayer repeated, not out loud. His mind was full of hysterical amusement. It wouldn't help to get mad at him for that, R'onn knew that, and yet. It was hard not to get swept along with his vivid thought-processes. Mindflayer, in his civilian guise as a rocket scientist was brilliant, a genius—and R'onn didn't know why he had to funnel all his energy into criminally masterminding. It wasn't as if he had actual superpowers! And yet he regularly went toe to toe with those who had. All thanks to his inventions. R'onn admired that. The only reason he had ever had been able to become a superhero, was his ability to run very fast and talk a good talk.

Mindflayer's mind was weapon, honed very sharp. Part of the reason why the press choose that particular nickname for him, R'onn always assumed—or perhaps because he managed to reduce the reigning superhero for his city to a blubbering mess using just his psychology degree. 

"This is inconvenient," Mindflayer said. 

That was also pretty fucking evident, as they were both very much limited in what they could do.

"Would you mind if I maimed your sidekick just a little bit?" Mindflayer continued, conversationally.

"What! No!" R'onn had to protest immediately. He thought uncharitably about his newest sidekick, a mutant sent by the academy that he was supposed to keep an eye out— but in the past few days that he'd been living with her, she'd managed to break more essential systems than his last few villain attacks combined.

Mindflayer sighed, deeply. 'This is ridiculous. If you're that stupid about it, I'm going to go back to my secret lab.'

'You know I can hear what you're thinking!'

'Sure,' Mindflayer agreed, and flashed a series of incomprehensible formula at him. 'Doesn't mean you have any idea, at all, what I'm working on. Besides, it's perfectly legitimate invisible armor. And in the meanwhile, you can think about your new sidekick.'

R'onn didn't know why he would want to think about his new sidekick, and was contemplating what his nemesis meant. 

Mindflayer got up. He struggled, and R'onn was reminded again that he was a rather mundane human aside from his brilliant mind. Mindflayer reacted to that thought with annoyance— it was more clear than the middle finger he pointed at R'onn. He was limping through the glass, and then struggled onto the flying motorcycle. 

R'onn projected the death statistics for driving without a helmet at him. It was only a little more successful in driving his nemesis to further annoyance. The further Mindflayer got away from him, the less oppressive his mind was pressing on R'onn's. It was a relief— the strength of their accidental bond was probably dependant on their distance to each other. It would have been pretty weird if Mindflayer could listen in on his every thought, not to mention a huge liability and invasion of privacy. R'onn could help his small hysterical laugh when he thought about Mindflayer's input on his dayjob as a legal clerk. (It was the perfect sidejob for a superhero: Nobody was ever interested in what a clerk did. R'onn's mentor had been an accountant, but R'onn was notoriously bad at numbers. He just could not get a handle on base 10.)

R'onn poked around the ruins of the now destroyed secret lab of his nemesis, to see if he could find any security codes or definitely illegal substances, but it was pretty cleaned out, and then he left to go grocery shopping.

It was in the fruit aisle, where he was deciding between organic lemons, green limes, and the generic kind, when a sudden influx of pain almost blinded him. R'onn dropped the limes on his feet, and covered his ears, but he could feel Mindflayer panicking in his head. 

A old lady looked at him full of reproach and said, "You have to buy those now." She pointed towards the limes on the ground—but R'onn had to ignore her, he had to leave and check on Mindflayer, who had an outrageous vocabulary of curse words.

What could have made his longtime nemesis panic so? 'Fuck, no, stay away;' he heard, and he couldn't follow that demand at all—either Mindflayer was doing something illegal, dangerous, or both. R'onn just needed to check on him for a bit. 'Keep your sidekick at home!'

R'onn didn't alert his sidekick before going in. That was something that went against the League's standard practises, but he could always say that Mindflayer had interrupted his grocery run. Which he had. 

Even though he was running towards Mindflayer, the telepathic bond didn't increase, but R'onn was still faced with the barrage of nonsensical thoughts— Mindflayer's thoughts were a mess. 

'I'm coming,' he told him when he arrived at yet another entrance to a secret lab—yet another indication that Mindflayer's job as an astrophysics engineer paid much more than R'onn's meagre salary in the law firm. 'Hide the illegal stuff if you want to keep it.'

The first few seconds Mindflayer focused on a giant dartboard made out of a cardboard cutout of that time R'onn had posed for the League's fundraising calendar— tastefully, but entirely in nude— and then there was a loud 'FUCK OFF!' that almost caused him to run against a car.

R'onn stumbled into the entrance, hidden by the obligatory "Keep Out!"-sign behind the dumpsters, and ran full-speed ahead through the lair. 

"Why the fuck did you have to come," Mindflayer said. He was alone, in front of his computer system, frantically typing away. 

"You were panicking," R'onn said dumbly.

"And you came to my rescue? I'm your nemesis!"

R'onn wondered what  that had to do with anything, but Mindflayer was still, well, out of his mind with worry.

"There's a non-zero your sidekick will be trying to break my encryption of my favourite satellite in, oh, 10 minutes approximately, and if you distract me at all, I will flay your mind." Mindlayer pronounced in elucidated words and an ever increasing sense of panic.

What had his sidekick to do with taking over a satellite from Mindflayer? And would it not be ultimately a good thing, to have one less satellite run by an evil mastermind? Though R'onn hadn't known that his side-kick knew anything about computers—

"Wait," R'onn said. "My sidekick is a supervillain?"

Mindflayer rolled his eyes, and continued typing. R'onn stared into nothing and tried to wrap his head around the fact that a villain had snuck first into the League's hero list— which, okay, he could believe, there was a horrifying lack of oversight for vigilante applications—but then also on his team. But it made sense, there had never been so much destruction of public property during their calls for help. And there had been some key evidence going missing...

R'onn became aware that he was staring at a giant cutout of his naked self. He paused. He hadn't thought this thing was real, only a taunt from his longterm nemesis, but it was there in all of his nude glory. The artful pose looked less artful blown up like that, and R'onn felt a flush creeping over him. He chanced a look at Mindflayer, but he was studiously avoiding looking at him.

His sidekick was apparently a villain, and his nemesis had a picture of him on the wall. R'onn sat down where he was standing. This was too much. 

"Would you stop pouting quite so loudly," Mindflayer asked him.

"You're the one with a giant picture of me on your wall!"

"Oh please," Mindflayer said. "As if you don't have a crush the size of Jupiter on my brain."

R'onn, who had not actually thought that hard about it, ever, had to admit, that from the outside one could have possibly come to the conclusion that he admired his nemesis's intellect. A bit. 

"That is different," R'onn said, finally.

"How so?" Mindflayer asked, and was suddenly too near. Apparently he had finished his preparations. He was now entirely intent on R'onn—and there had been some mind trick towards the sudden change in intensity of the bond. It was overwhelming again. R'onn could feel every single of his nemesis' stray thoughts, all directed towards him. The way his eyes were shining, the way his muscles bulged underneath his suit, suggesting superstrength instead of superspeed.

The physical kiss was almost underwhelming in the face of the overabundance of mental feelings. Almost, but not quite, because it was a kiss R'onn had been anticipating since the first time they had went up against each other.

Of course, Jenna, his side-kick, chose exactly this moment in time to drop in from the skylight, destroying it in the process, and landing in the middle of the lair.

With a faint note of regret in his mind, R'onn let go of his nemesis. "Jenna!" he said sternly. "What are you doing here?"

His usually rather bubbly sidekick scoffed, and said, "Isn't it obvious? I'm trying to get the mindcontrol device."

"Which mindcontrol device?" R'onn asked. "I don't have a mindcontrol device," Mindflayer added. "Or else, don't you think I would have used it on this stupid lugg?"

"Hey!" R'onn protested half-heartedly at best. 

"What was that telepathic device you had at the other lab, then?" Jenna asked, her acid powers light up. R'onn remebered the corresponding holes, back at the other secret lab, and shivered. There wasn't much Mindflayer would be able to do against powers like hers, which was why the League had sent her in the first place—

'Stop being so dramatic,' Mindflayer told him. 'Stall, I have help coming.' "That was for telepathic compatibility testing. Because of my gigantic crush on R'onn R'onn. He is an alien, after all. But it was non-functional, and also, yeah, you destroyed it."

Briefly stalled, Jenna asked, "Your gigantic crush on R'onn?" Helplessly, she looked at said person.

R'onn shrugged, and gestured towards the giant nude cardboard cutout of himself. It grew on R'onn the more he looked at it. 

Jenna stared at it in horrified wonder. "Your...uh." 

'Now would be a good time for that intervention!' R'onn thought frantically. 

Mindflayer rolled his eyes, and pushed the big red button that said "Abort mission". Much like his usual red buttons, they were there only for decoration, or so R'onn had assumed from trying to push them to disrupt Mindflayer's evil projects. Usually after that, he resorted to ripping out cables, but that wasn't an option here. As far as he could tell, Jenna was no secret cyborg.

A few moments nothing happened. Then, through the hole in the ceiling, a weighted net fell down on top of Jenna, who had not moved from underneath it. R'onn blinked. R'onn blinked some more, when Jenna struggled to get out of her bounds, and couldn't free herself with the use of her acid powers. 'What is that thing?'

'Oh, just a tiny invention I've made.'

"You are under arrest," Mindflayer said out loud. "For impersonating a vigilante, and trying to destroy my relationships, sister."

"You can't do that to me!" Jenna said. "What would mother say!"

"She'd say you should be able to deal with the consequences of your own actions."

"You can't even arrest me, I did nothing wrong!"

"Except break through that hole in the ceiling," R'onn added to the rather heated discussion. He was very confused by these happenstances, but was willing to go with the flow. 

"That's fair," Jenna said, much calmer. "But you can't get arrested for wanton destruction of property!"

"Fine," Mindflayer said. "But I will call mother if you don't pack your bags and go annoy a different superhero. I called dips on this one years ago!"

R'onn, who was thinking about getting arrested for wanton destruction of property, which was, in fact, very possible, missed the first half of Mindflayer's sentence. 'What?' was his first reaction, but he could only feel the supreme embarrassment instead of something that would explain this turn of events.

"Deal," Jenna said, and briefly looked into R'onn's direction. "I don't get what you see in him anyway."

They shook on it, Jenna still lying underneath the net. Then, Mindflayer kicked off the net with his foot, and let her scramble up. 

She straightened, pulled at her supersuit to make it more comfortable. After that, she ran her fist full of acid against Mindflayer's face. R'onn reacted faster than he could think, and caught her wrist before she could impact. Mindflayer had moved out of the way of her path, too, and was currently thinking about R'onn's hands on himself.

"Now, now, Jenna. Don't be a sore looser," Mindflayer said. 

Jenna sent her blast of acid towards the cardboard cutout of R'onn instead, and in a running start, fled out of the lair.

"Well," R'onn said. He inspected the area around him, which was an excellent example of the wanton destruction superhumans could wreck, and then on the slowly dissolving image of himself, prominently in the middle of the wall.

'I can still hear you thinking,' Mindflayer said.

"That's nice," R'onn said. "I can, too. How about I bandage that gash on your entire side of your ribs, before you get an infection?"

Mindflayer was shocked to quiet, and blinked. Then, he laughed a bit hysterical. "Just like that?"

R'onn shrugged. He had made worse decisions in the past, not the least of which was picking a secret villain as his sidekick, so really? Who could even say that dating one was worse than employing one?

'That's not how any of this works,' Mindflayer complained, but he subjected himself to R'onn's first aid ministration readily enough. They were totally dating, if R'onn had only found out about it minutes ago.


End file.
